Too Good To Wait

Were I a good blogger, I would have waited a couple of weeks to post this. March 2 would have been my late husband's* 61st birthday, you see. But it's getting near sundown, it's snowing again and we are alone in the house together. Like so many times before, I am too overcome.

Happy early birthday, my darling. I miss you.



*Wedding may have taken place in my imagination.

Windier Days...A Bell-Kick Montage (The girl is me)(The producer is Beulah)

Susan Sarandon Angst

Every once in a while, I get sucked into the evil vortex of totally flat, ostentatious displays of schmaltz so syrupy you could attach a spigot to it and use it to dress your waffle. Stepmom. First of all, Stepmom isn't meant to be a tear-jerker. It's meant to be a tear-RAPER. And “I’ll remember always always!”, which is supposed to be the emotional climax of an exasperatingly melodramatic film, actually made me burst into laughter. Sorry. I just don’t know how Susan Sarandon managed to keep a straight face. And when Julia Roberts calls up Random House (just in general) and asks for Jackie, and the voice at the other end says, “This is the editor at Random House. I haven’t seen Jackie since she quit eleven years ago”, I face-palmed so hard it left a mark. What kind of puppy-torturer must she have been in her previous life to warrant that level of occupational karma? The only editor at the headquarters of a huge international publishing house, and not even a secretary to answer their single phone line! You’d think she’d be too busy eating potato bugs and talking to the bathtub to dispense sensible advice about looking for the house with balloons, but she is clearly a remarkable person (as evidenced by her savant-like memory as she recalls, without a moments' hesitation, exactly who an ex-colleague was even though she hadn't seen her in over a decade. What a trooper.)

Also, it totally re-affirmed my Susan Sarandon angst, which goes hand-in-hand with my Robert De Niro angst. You guys…IF YOU CAN HEAR ME…nobody is going to remember Thelma and Louise or Bull Durham or Taxi Driver or The King of Comedy if you keep this shit up! You’re legacy is going to be Meet the Fockers and The Banger Sisters…is that what you want? IS IT?? I mean, sure, the subject matter of The Banger Sisters prohibits me from hating it totally, but Susan? It’s a terrible movie. Curiously magnetic, but terrible. And I want to be as hardbodied and hot as Goldie Hawn when I'm in my mid-fifties, but again...terrible. And I do appreciate that someone finally attempted to immortalize Pamela Des Barres, but yes...terrible. And fine, I admit I own it on DVD, but only because it was reduced to £2.99 in the bargain bin. But nevertheless...terrible.

You take the good, you take the unbelievably bad...

I'd say that I'm a big fan of everything through Edna's Edibles. When it burned down and became Over Our Heads, the show started to lose me. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that I was no longer ten, but it suddenly seemed that there were too many tertiary characters appearing out of nowhere, and Mrs. Garrett's presence got more and more confounding, and the homoerotic tension between Blair and Jo went from charming to FREAKING DO IT ALREADY, and then, out of nowhere, Cloris Leachman. The whole premise of the show suffered major suspension-of-disbelief problems after the first two or three seasons anyway, since no 18-20 year-old women I know would voluntarily share a bedroom unless the circumstances were very, very not what you would base a 1980's network sitcom on.

Of course, The Facts of Life as most of us think of it--Blair and Jo trading barbs, Natalie and Tootie gosh-golly-gee-ing around in pigtails--didn't actually come about until season 2. The FIRST season was thirteen episodes of pure bliss, and it stands alone in its unintentionally Felliniesqueness. Don't get me wrong, the first couple of Jo seasons are great, but nothing--NOTHING--out-camps the the houseful of superfluous girls hilariously overacting some of the most appalling dialogue every written. Sue Ann smokes pot! Is Cindy a lesbian? Blair wants to do the headmaster! Natalie finds her birth mother! Nancy loves Roger! Mrs. Garrett's ex-husband teaches the girls how to gamble! Blair's mom is a slut! Tootie, the original Rollergirl! Natalie buys a bong from a record shop to put jelly beans in! Plus, you have the sleaziest, 1970's-jailbaitiest costuming imaginable(one false move and we would have been able to see Lisa Whelchel's virtue for ourselves), you have Molly Ringwald as an 11 year-old, you have the Drummonds constantly popping up for no apparent reason, and nothing makes any rational sense whatsoever. It's a hot mess made in heaven.

The clip below is what started my lifelong girl-crush on Lisa Whelchel. Not even her descent into blithering, fundy psychosis can shatter my love completely (although it has facilitated significant erosion), because freaky-for-Jesus or no, she took my breath away--especially when her character was still vaguely skanky and chilled and kept a joint in her lipstick tube. The uptight, overachieving heiress Blair Warner of post-season 2 still bewitched me, but I clearly remember thinking that, when I got to be a teenager, I wanted to run around in purple satin hot pants and have long, luxurious, golden hair. This was before I was old enough to understand the cruel genetic lottery, of course.

Bloody Pagans!

I walk through the St. Giles cemetary every morning, not because I'm like TOTALLY goth right down to the route I take to work, but because it's the most direct shortcut between the bus stop and my desk. In the summertime, all the homeless people set up their tents amongst the tombstones and trees; I don't know if the cops hassle them less or if it's just generally nicer or what, but you walk through there in early-morning July and it's like Glastonbury sometimes. Today I was talking to a guy called Kevin and he told me this:

At the end of one particularly intoxicated evening spent ambushing theater-goers with the standard "can you spare 50p so I can afford a cup of coffee" routine shouted at full auctioneer's tempo so as to get in a heartstring-tugging plea before the subjects managed to hurry out of earshot, Kevin crawled back to his tent in the cemetary to pass out. He had just about managed a full exit when he was suddenly jarred into confused, panicked consciousness by some loud chanting right outside his door... "Bloody Pagans, dancing round a tree and chanting at FOUR IN THE FUCKIN' MORNING!" he told me, completely appalled by utter the lack of decorum. "Well, I come runnin' out with my fist, an' I shouted 'You bloody Pagans! Can't you see that people are TRYING TO SLEEP!!" Despite his initial bravado, however, in the cold, hungover light of the next day, Kevin decided it was best to move on, because "Fuck that spooky shit."

Also, my humming improved.

What a bizarrely chipper mood cycling puts me in! I loathe to imagine that I'm on the road to becoming one of those hardcore enthusiasts with the neon spandex and special gloves, but who knows. I might be. I made pretty good time this morning, too. I would have arrived even sooner had the bike not tipped over while I was wrestling with the front door on the way out. The basket on the back, into which I stuff my work clothes, lunch, purse and all of the zillion items those things entail, snapped completely off and I couldn't figure out how it had been affixed to the back in the first place. I stood outside, still half asleep, staring at the fallen bike for a while before I managed to get it together enough to go back in the house and find some bungee chords. I probably could have made it in by 7:30 had I not been forced to faff around and conjure WAY too much problem-solving, analytical brain power for that hour of the morning.

Oh, and I swallowed a bug. It was on Five Mile Drive. That doesn't happen as often as you might think, especially when you consider that I have to go through some areas that are positively rainforestesque in their insectiness. In fact, it has only happened one other time--a couple of years ago, but I will never forget that day because I was cruising down Jordan Hill, which is the only truly fun part of the trip (a very long, steep decline--very "WHEEEE!" and welcoming, especially on a hot day) when a bee...a freaking BEE...slammed into my tonsils with such force that the impact killed it instantly. At least, that's what I choose to believe. I swerved madly, sputtering and gagging and amusing the passing motorists, screeching to a stop on the overpass and desperately trying not to swallow, but it was too late. I ate the bee. I was totally disgusted and shuddery for the rest of the day. However, I did not suffer any negative gastrointestinal consequences, so there's a survival nugget for you--if ever you find yourself starving in the jungle, feel free to eat bees.

This morning's bug wasn't as big of a deal. It was a little gnat or something. It wasn't actually that disturbing. I think the bee incident made a woman out of me.

Awesome House of Big, Happy Fun

He's been on my blogroll forlikeever, but I wanted to give a proper shout-out to the Bighappyfunhouse today because it's one of the best dern destinations on this whole confounding internets. Apart from my own lifelong fascination with vernacular photography (which,until Ron came along, I thought was just some weird and possibly unhealthy voyeurism issue involving other peoples' old pictures--who knew it was an actual thing!), what I love about this site is its simplicity. It's totally without prentention or wizardry of any annoying kind. They way he assumes that his hypnotically beautiful found art will showcase itself proves that he is, on a very crucial level, a true genius.

I could (and do) spend hours rifling through his treasures. It's impossible for me to comprehend how anybody could let go of their souls like that. At the same time, though, it warms my heart to know they've found a loving home.